Posted on 04/14/2002 5:26:15 PM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla., April 14 — The Bush administration has “muddied our moral clarity” by pressuring Israel not to protect itself against terrorists after the United States aggressively responded to the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday. Democrats also used the Florida conference to rally around better election controls after the 2000 election fiasco
ANOTHER DEMOCRATIC presidential hopeful visiting the Florida Democratic Convention — Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts — criticized the president for taking too long to get involved in the conflict.
Their comments suggested that foreign affairs won’t be immune from the partisan political debates that soon will grow more heated. Over the past six months, Democrats have been very careful to separate the war on terrorism in Afghanistan from the debate over domestic issues. But the violence in the Middle East is becoming an increasingly popular topic of partisan debate.
White House officials were not immediately available to comment.
Lieberman told Florida Democrats that “what is happening in the Middle East now is not about Palestinian statehood, which we should support, but about Palestinian suicide bombers, which America and Israel must stop.”
The Connecticut lawmaker visited the convention with other potential 2004 presidential candidates including Al Gore, the party’s 2000 presidential nominee, Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
SLOW INVOLVEMENT CRITICIZED
Earlier in the convention, Edwards criticized how long it took for the Bush administration to get involved in the Middle East, while Gore reserved his criticism for domestic issues.
Lieberman said President Bush “has brought a moral clarity” to the terrorism conflict around in Afghanistan and around the world.
But Lieberman said “the Bush administration has really muddied our moral clarity.” He said Israel has been attacked in “a relentless campaign of suicide bombers — killers with the same disregard for human life as those who attacked us September 11th.”
Lieberman said Bush’s attempts to pressure Israel against fighting terrorism as aggressively as the United States “risks losing the high ground and compromising our own war on terrorism.”
Kerry told the convention he understood Israel’s right to aggressively respond to suicide bombers on the West Bank. But he said it was important for the United States to be engaged in the region, and he criticized the Bush administration for waiting more than a year before engaging.
“A great nation like ours should not be dragged kicking and resisting” to the task of ending the violence, Kerry said, adding the U.S. should have been involved in the process as early as possible.
“We must not only be prepared to take risks to wage war,” he said, “but we must also be prepared to take risks to make peace.”
BALLOT RECOUNT
The bruising struggle over the 2000 election recount was never far from the surface of the weekend convention.
More than a year after Florida’s virtual tie threw the election into five weeks of chaos that ended with Al Gore’s defeat and President Bush’s election, memories of the battle inspire Democratic politicians and rank-and-file members even as they fade from memory for many Americans.
Speaker after speaker at the Democratic conference used the recount as a rallying cry, vowing to prevent the abuses that Democrats claim led to the disenfranchisement of millions of state voters.
The recount struggle, and the sky-high emotions it generated, also give Democrats ammunition for countless fund-raising letters and get-out-the-vote campaigns.
Party activists say the recount energized base Democratic voters and could lead to stronger party turnout in November, particularly among minorities.
“There is still a lot of anger and indignation over what happened here,” said Jan Lentz, a Democratic delegate from New Port Richey. “Everybody here is really fired up. I think you’ll see that turnout will be huge.”
The recount led to election reform packages in both Florida and the U.S. Congress. The Senate approved a package last week designed to stop the abuses found in Florida, but differences with the House version still must be reconciled.
In Florida, the legislature last year adopted an election reform bill that outlawed the punch card ballots at the heart of the chaos in 2000.
“In Texas, they say ’Remember the Alamo,”’ Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said Saturday. “But across America, we say ’Remember Florida.”’
Oh boy, so now it's millions of voters who were "disenfranchised." Unbelievable.
I still remember listening to him deliver his self-righteous semi-condemnation of clintbilly that day in the Sinate. When he stopped short of calling for resignation, he gave up the right to speak of ANYTHING moral.
He is a hypocrite and a fraud.
Yes we will remember how Gore tried to cheat and sue his way into the White House...how they deliberately disinfranchised the overseas military vote and how the US Supreme Court had to step in to put and end to Gores violations of Federal election laws and the US Constitution.
I hope they do keep bringing it up...because SoreLoserman acted disgracefully, and Bush was victorious.
We can replay that over and over again.
I doubt it..the Dem's hypocrisy will be far too evident.
Clinton's the one who had Arafat over the White House more than any other leader, and pushed the Israelis to give up everything for peace...and STILL failed.
Everyone knows Bush has been far more hardline against Arafat than the Clinton administration ever was, so this criticism from Dems is just laughable.
Look closely at their attacks on Bush and all you see are "weasel words." We "should" do something or other, we "must act," we must be willing to "take risks" to "achieve peace," blah, blah, blah. I'm a professional writer, and I've written quite a few speeches for myself and other people. This is the type of rabble-rousing boilerplate you insert into a speech only when you either are too gutless to make any concrete statement or you are so bumfuzzled, you have no idea what to say so you just emit a lot of smoke and hope you can fool the audience into thinking there must be a fire under it.
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